


i too go forming you

by Siria



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-12
Updated: 2009-05-12
Packaged: 2017-10-03 19:27:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a Wednesday evening, which means: a late sparring session in the gym with Sheppard and meatloaf in the mess for dinner; turning in just enough of his backlog of mission reports to keep Woolsey happy for another week; heading back to their quarters with two gooey, purloined brownies wrapped up in a paper napkin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i too go forming you

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to Cate for betaing.

It's a Wednesday evening, which means: a late sparring session in the gym with Sheppard and meatloaf in the mess for dinner; turning in just enough of his backlog of mission reports to keep Woolsey happy for another week; heading back to their quarters with two gooey, purloined brownies wrapped up in a paper napkin. Ronon's got a bruise blossoming on the back of his shin and ink stains on his knuckles, his meal sitting heavy in the pit of his stomach while a cool autumn rain drums against the window panes, and this could be any routine Wednesday—that's strange, still, that he has days and weeks and months around which to structure to his life; that day doesn't simply follow day with no more rhythm than the dull thud of his own heartbeat grown heavier with fear.

Atlantis has given him a routine, and something close to normalcy, and this—a door to close behind him at the end of the day, someone beloved sitting up in bed, waiting for him. Jennifer's been working late, it looks like; her laptop's sitting silent on the desk, but she's got a pad of yellow-tinged paper sitting on her steepled knees and she's scribbling on it at a ferocious rate. Her hair's pulled back into a long braid that glows warm in the light from the bedside lamp, and she's chewing on the very end of it—a habit of hers, Ronon's learned, when she's concentrating on something.

He sets the brownies down on the low table beside their bed and pulls his boots off before he eases himself down next to her. _Hey_, he says, and _hey_, she mumbles in return, mind abstracted with work but her affection constant enough to make her turn and seek out a kiss from him—brief and warm—before she returns to her writing and finishes the paragraph. Jennifer scrubs at her eyes before tossing the pad of paper and the pencil onto the table and dimming the lights, settling down next to him with a soft sigh and tugging the blankets up over them both.

"Long day?" Ronon asks.

"A Wednesday," she says. "Inventory, and paperwork, and then Colonel Sheppard's annual physical. That went _well_."

"Oh," Ronon says. That's explanation enough.

"But don't worry," Jennifer continues, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek. "You're still my favourite uncooperative patient."

"'m not uncooperative," he says in protest.

"Ronon Kardeht Dex, you tried to check yourself out of the infirmary once with a _spear bolt_ embedded in your side." Jennifer shoots him a mock glare, but beneath the teasing, Ronon sees the ghost of her worry, the echo of the fear that had lingered in her even after the surgeries, during the days when Ronon was sure that her small hand clasped in his was all that had pulled him through.

Ronon squirms a little. "Wasn't a _big_ bolt," is the only comeback he can manage.

"Actually, if I remember my case notes correctly," she says, pursing her mouth and squinting up at the ceiling in mock earnestness, "it measured—" and Ronon has to hush her as best as he knows how, cupping her cheek in one hand while he kisses her, slow and slow and slow.

"Okay," she says when he pulls back, and she sounds a little breathless, "so your distraction techniques are working just fine," and Ronon looks down at her in the dim light, at her bright eyes and flushed cheeks and the heavy fall of her hair, at the affection in her gaze that's been two years growing and six months acknowledged.

"Hi," he says, and he was seven years a Runner, seven years surviving because of restraint and control and balance, and Ronon can't stop the smile from spreading across his face as he looks at her. She's a surprise to him, still.

"Hi yourself," Jennifer says, and shifts to let him settle his weight on top of her. She plays with a loose curl of his hair with one hand.

"I have..." Ronon says, and swallows, because this is a question he's been meaning to ask of her for weeks; this is a question which could keep things as they are, or change them all at once, and he's not sure which outcome he wants most. "I've something to ask you."

Jennifer blinks up at him, looking curious but not afraid. "Okay?"

Ronon sits up, and from a drawer in the bedside table he removes the _kheshen_ and places the coil of it into the palm of her hand.

"You wanted to ask me if I'd like... a piece of red thread?" She sounds uncertain, as if there's a joke at the heart of this that she's not getting.

He shakes his head, and takes a deep breath. "On Sateda," he says, "if there's someone you—you wear the _kheshen_. Tie it around your wrist, where the heart-pulse is. Red for commitment, thread for connection. Made by hand, doesn't look like much, but it's strong." He picks up the thread and tugs on it by way of demonstration; it flexes, but doesn't snap.

Jennifer stares at him, eyes wide, but her voice is calm. "Ronon, are you asking me to marry you?"

"No, it's..." It's awkward, trying to find the words to explain what anyone on Sateda would have known instinctively. Ronon's not seen much of Earth marriages—fictionalised fragments in movies; the smaller remnants of Sheppard's own—but he doesn't think it's much like the wearing of the _kheshen_. "It's a vow, sort of. It's me saying what I feel, not asking something from you. It just means... I'm telling you. This is me."

Jennifer blinks, then blurts out, "Well, hell."

That's not the answer he was hoping for, and Ronon can feel himself flinch, just a little, fingers curling into the soft cloth of their bed clothes. Better to have stuck with things as they were, he thinks; better to have been glad for having solid ground beneath his feet and not to have hoped for more. "Oh," he mumbles, "uh—" and he feels just as unsure of himself as he ever did when he was a newly-minted cadet, still pining for home with the burn of first ink stinging the fine skin of his neck.

"Ronon, no," she says, "just—" and Ronon opens his eyes to see that Jennifer looks nervous and uncertain and _happy_. "You think there's enough thread there to fit two wrists?" she asks, and the determined set of her jaw is part of what drew him to her in the first place: the capacity she had to always welcome him home, to make his heart glad.

"Yeah," he says, smiling wide enough to make his cheeks hurt, "yes," and kisses her; and if the limits of what he'd hoped for have to be expanded, then this new life he's stumbled into has scope enough to contain them both, and his fingers have found purchase enough to allow him to create a new _kheshen_ for them both, two lifelines woven together.


End file.
